


Notes on immigration generations and abuse cycles in Glee

by CyanoFal



Category: Glee
Genre: Archived from cyanoticfallacy blog, Gen, Meta, Meta Essay, Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-14 16:20:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16916223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CyanoFal/pseuds/CyanoFal
Summary: Developing a potential project to understand Blaine and Santana's referenced familial abuse in light of their positions as multi-gen immigrant kids - originally posted August 9, 2018 on cyanoticfallacy blog





	Notes on immigration generations and abuse cycles in Glee

My relationship to my cultural and ethnic identities as a third-generation American citizen is interwoven with my relationship to my parents as a third-generation abused kid. I’m not certain how else I can phrase this concept than to use the language of immigration assimilation because they seem intrinsically tied in my family. My grandpas needed to support the family financially more than they could support them emotionally. My mom’s dad was an alcoholic. My dad’s dad beat him up. Except my mom’s mom stood up to her husband and showed my mom how to do it. My dad’s mom enabled hers. My mom inherited a dialectical, dormant spirit of confrontation and tenderness. My dad inherited a dialectic temper and fear of confrontation. I have somehow managed to combine the latter of both.

I have no family history. My maternal grandma doesn’t talk about her childhood because her mother left her family and her grandma was strict. My maternal grandpa is dead, the last of his siblings to be alive, and his family is scattered across Texas. My paternal grandpa is dead with only one brother in California. My paternal grandma has family in the old country and she still speaks her language, but I’ve never lived close enough to connect to it. My family begins with my grandparents and right now it ends with me. We are three cycles of families and every generation dilutes our culture just as it dilutes the pain.

-

So if I connect this to a text

And by that I mean if I connect this to Glee

I am intrigued by how similar concepts emerge looking at Santana and Blaine. Is it possible to come to any stable conclusion about their immigrant and family identities with the hints the show gives us? In order to understand this, we (I’m saying we like the larger Glee meta community, but mostly I just mean me) need to dig into the song choice and choreography with as much relevance as we dig into dialogue and action. Santana’s grandma calls her garbage face and still loves her deeply, and still disowns her after she comes out, and still returns for her wedding. Blaine’s dad has him fix a car with him, an activity that Blaine doesn’t see as a bonding activity but rather as a straightening task, and I would argue that it is his perception that is the most important tool in this analysis. Santana is visibly brown so she might not play up her Latinidad, but she cannot hide it either. Blaine passes. They’re both mestizas (I use the feminine on purpose), and they’re both from cultures originally colonized by Spain and then colonized by the US (in both cases I also must assume this based off the actors’ ethnicities). Santana expresses her rage by lashing out; Blaine compresses.

It would largely focus on Santana because I don’t have a strong background in As-Am studies, but I want to use him as a point of reference and comparison if possible, because there are so many similarities. Glee has other abused kid points popping up, especially looking at Quinn and Mr. Schuester (and I’m looking more at fear of a person than neglect/abandonment, because I think the Puckermans are a different ballgame), and they might be worth folding into the discussion too. Scratch the might, I do think they’re worth understanding. Especially especially especially folding in Quinn’s position as a teen mom, there is so much to talk about, but specifically in terms of ethnicity, immigration, and abuse cycles, Santana and Blaine have a lot going on.


End file.
